


holy anatomy

by bombcollar



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls III
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 22:03:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21106730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: when you are a living saint, every racked breath is sacred.





	holy anatomy

A shroud for him, ancient cloth upon which countless knees have bent, praying for clarity.

Scabs opening, cracked and bleeding, signs to be read and bled upon with each fervent ceremony, new chapters in a book of prophecy forever unfolding.

Rough cloth to press into his new and tender skin, to etch the prayers of sages past, to emboss a blessing, traceable over and over on scapula, on acromion, on ilium. The scars carved upon his body in moments of pain, of fever and fugue, runes of prophecy, read like braille by tender fingers, cold flesh on cold flesh.

Want breeds purity as maggots breed in meat, eating away, carving out new hollows, forever seeking satiation that cannot come. He must want as the world wants for the warmth of the Flame, he must yearn as a lover does for the hot breath of the Flame on his neck. This world is rotten and only the purest of kindling can burn away the gangrene, cauterize the parts oozing and black and fetid.

If only bones are left then adorn the bones as those of saints. Gold filigree upon black and ashen gray, raiment melted in the funeral pyre. Each curve of soft metal is a message, a warning. The wheel of the world grinds itself down and down spinning in the dark mud of entropy, each rotation shorter than the last.

The bedroom is a reliquary, he says, for in being born to die I am dead already. I am the dove flayed open, my entrails split, picked through by scrutinizing hands. Every rale, every scab and ingrown scale a prophecy, every fevered nightmare scripture. Fingertips in the hollows of my bones, scrabbling for meaning.

They listen with ears straining and backs bowed, tendons taut, but they do not hear. They cry out about a flood, the rising cold sea. Water. What comes, my lord? Water. The rim of the world falling into the abyss. Rain to drown the fields and roads and cattle. Water. Not fire? Not ash? Water. Water. The priests bring out their tomes, consult the old legends, argue and bicker as the candles burn to nothing. Water, he says. Water.

I am so thirsty.

**Author's Note:**

> "he really is... just a sentient magic 8 ball someone comes in and jostles time to time to get some new fodder for a sermon"
> 
> \- my friend aru, speaking the truth


End file.
